I loved Pikmin 1 and 2, they seemed so different from anything else I played, it was such a gamer changer to me. my gamecube collection mostly consisted of adventure games and the pikmin series was my introduction in the RTS genre. I had so much fun with these games and had long awaited this sequel.

Sunday morning when Pikmin 3 came out I rushed so fast to get it that I was still in my PJs at the store. Since walmart was open the earliest of all the places that would sell the game I went there and boy did I get some weird looks from those clerks, the lady to get the game for me even felt the need to say she had never heard of Pikmin before, but alas my stupid grin could not be broken and I told her that she was missing out. Once I was home and popped the disk in I was greeted with some fantastic colors on that start screen which only drove my anticipation. I soaked up all of the first cutscene and just want the game to start so i could have my lovable, cute, monstrous army in tow.

Pikmin 3 opens up with a much more bleak story in which the player characters are a group of explorers trying to find a new food source for their starving planet and they are the last chance their planet has at a future, this seemed much different from the personal survival story from the first game and the corporate greed of the second, but alas that only raised the stakes. The game opens up with your pilots all being split up and some playable climatic tense being built up. I played this game with the game pad and having not played pikmin 1 and 2 in a while it felt a little more difficult to control the pikmin than before but the pikmin were still manageable and with the new "everyone go f*** that monster up" button it was easy to make quick work of most enemies.

Alot of the game has been streamlined to make managing pikmin and breeding them a little bit easier, this means your spending less time building your army and more time solving the puzzles in the levels, which there seems to be more of and emphasis on instead of combat. This is a nice break from some of the usual things to do but this game leans on the puzzles too much using up most of your days to doing them, often leaving little time for a boss if you get to them in the same day as completing all of the puzzles before them.

A major complaint for me then is that the enemies seem too easy and too far and few between this time, one of the main attractions to me of the pikmin series was the vast enemy types and Pikmin 3 seem to under deliver on variety or difficulty, apart from the boss fights that is. The Bosses are all really fun to fight and mostly test your ability to round up your pikmin fast and which ones to use and when, much in the vein of zelda or metroid usually your newest pikmin will be key to your success, however all these fights can be over come simply through brute force since bosses maintain damage over days taking away a bit of the challenge,

Another major gripe of mine was the lack of collectables in this game, with the amount of days you can last for and how much there is to do the games time limit almost seems non-existent, remembering back to pikmin 2 there was lots of items to find and collect, Pikmin 3 fails to give any real urgency or motivation to keep exploring.

Reading those last few parts make it seem like I may be down on the game but I want to say I still had lots of fun with Pikmin 3 however it just felt like a bite sized tidbit of what a next-gen pikmin could really be and I hope we wont have to wait another 9 years for a sequel. This game isnt a must-have except for absolute pikmin fans but is solid enough that you should check it out if you do have a Wii U, after all this is all you'll really have to play on it.

Did you play Pikmin 3? let me know what you thought down below or on twitter, Thanks for reading!

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Decided to join the IGN community and wanted to give a quick hello, maybe say a bit about myself. Im single, looking for a steady relationship, I like smart funny women, but more importantly I like my women like I like my games, LONG AND HARD..... err, that cant be right. Jokes aside I play a ton of games (more than I should for being at university) and figured it would be awesome to get into some discussions about them. I think I'm pretty well rounded in the games, recently I finished Far Cry 3, Skylander Giants and AC3. Some games I'm currently trying to make my way through are; Xcom, Darksiders, Borderlands 2 and Spec Ops the line. Alright this is getting a little too listy lets break it up with a story.

I was cleaning my room from all the junk I seem to keep in there when I across my old PS2, PSP and Gamecube and had a heart breaking realization that I havent played them since I upgraded to the 360 and 3DS. It was hard to tell myself but I needed to part with these old consoles that would just collect dust, but I finally boxed them all up and put them up for sale. I dont know if it was all the memories of the great games such as windwaker, kingdom hearts, shadow of the colossus and patapon.

So anyone else have a similar experience getting rid of their old consoles, also I preordered bioshock infinite and tomb raider today, anyone else excited for them?